


certainties (in the end they're regrets)

by virdant



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25799071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: There are few certainties in life, but this is one of them. The twin suns rise, and the twin suns set.This is another certainty. There is suffering, and Anakin can help.--Anakin Skywalker, and the certainties he knows. How they change, as he he grows.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	certainties (in the end they're regrets)

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes, you make vows that you are never going to write structural fanfiction again because writing a custom CSS page takes too long, and then years later when you're trying to fall asleep you think of an anakin character study that requires coding a custom css page in order to properly convey your thoughts.
> 
> anyways, i acknowledge my failings in keeping promises to myself, here's an anakin character study! please keep creator skins on, and if you have them turned off, PLEASE TURN THEM ON. while the story can be read with creator skins off, the structure of the story is part of the character study. 
> 
> thank you to rose for reading the first draft and saying nice things truly i don't deserve her.
> 
> title from fish leong song 崇拜, and you can read the translation [here](https://nostarwords.livejournal.com/3762.html).

The sun blazes, furious and bright, and Anakin stands underneath it. He is a child, and the twin suns of Tatooine burn across his skin as he turns towards the sun. There are few certainties in life, but this is one of them. The twin suns rise, and the twin suns set. 

This is another certainty. There is suffering, and Anakin can help.

He has little. He is a slave, but he is still a person. He does not own anything, but he owns what he finds. He is owned, but his thoughts are not.

The suns blaze hot; it should make him hard and weathered. But instead, he takes the sunlight and lets it shine through him. He fixes things when he is only told to sort. He builds a robot to assist his mother. He looks at his fellow slaves and tries to ease their burden. His mother tells him that they must help everybody they can, even if they have little, and he listens.

Every day, he sees the suns rise. He sees the suns set. He sees suffering and knows he can help.

He would free all the slaves in the galaxy, if he could. He would help everybody, if he could. 

And then the Jedi come.

* * *

Obi-Wan takes him as his padawan. On Coruscant, the sun does not blaze the way they do on Tatooine. Instead, the light refracts across thousands of metallic surfaces. Coruscant is always bright, always dark, layers and layers of buildings stacked upon each other. From the tallest spires of the Jedi temple, Anakin can see the sun rise and set. But in their rooms, in the training dojos, on the streets of Coruscant, Anakin cannot see the sun rise and set.

There is suffering in the world. Anakin has not freed the slaves. But he spends more time training than helping. Anakin yearns to do more. From Coruscant, he cannot see the sun rise and set, and he clings to the certainty that there is suffering in the world, and he can help.

Obi-Wan says to wait. He says to be patient. He says that there is much that Anakin has to learn, to be a Jedi. Palpatine says he can do so much. He is a Jedi, after all, and Jedi have so much power. The power to change the world.

Anakin thinks of the people he left behind on Tatooine. His friends. His mother. They remain slaves, on Tatooine. Everybody that he left behind, he thinks of. He would help them, his friends, his family. He would free all the slaves of Tatooine, if he could.

The people he left behind on Tatooine are suffering, and Anakin will become a Jedi to relieve it.

* * *

He dreams of his mother at night, but the dreams do not leave him even after the sun has risen. He thinks of them, perpetually. As night turns to day, and as day turns to night, he thinks of his mother, suffering on Tatooine, and himself, on Coruscant, unable to help.

Anakin is a Jedi now, on the cusp of being a Knight. He is ready to do much. There are worlds in the galaxy suffering, and he is ready to help. When he meets Padme again, it is all he can do to help her.

The sun of Naboo is shining, so different from the twin suns of Tatooine, but its brightness reminds Anakin of some certainties. 

There are people—Padme, his mother—that are suffering, and he can help them.

On Tatooine, in the darkness of the night after the twin suns have set, he finds his mother and slaughters the Tusken Raiders who caused her suffering. 

(They scream, the children, as they are slaughtered, but he does not think them as people, and he does not hear them suffer.)

He carries his mother home as the twin suns of Tatooine begin to rise again. The rising of the suns is a certainty that he has always known, and even in the face of suffering, it does not stop. He buries his mother and some things he has always known.

The suns rise. The suns set. There is suffering in the world.

When he marries Padme in the setting sun, he promises that she will never suffer.

* * *

During the war, Anakin spends so much time in hyperspace, traveling from one planet to another. There is no sun to rise, no sun to set in the cold of space. But there is much war, and Anakin can do so much.

Every time he goes out, he is helping Padme. He is helping Palpatine. He is helping everybody he cares for: Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, Padme and Palpatine, as he fights for the Republic. 

He cuts through droids; he liberates worlds. He fights and fights and with each swing of his lightsaber he is helping. He is a Knight now, and he holds the power to rescue worlds. He holds the power to liberate those suffering. He can help.

Padme whispers that he wishes that the war would end. Palpatine bemoans the war. Obi-Wan grows more and more exhausted. Ahsoka is forced to grow in the midst of the war, fighting and fighting.

From space, he cannot see a sun rise, he cannot see a sun set. The only certainty that he can cling to is that the people he loves are suffering.

And Anakin knows that he must do what he can to help them.

* * *

Ahsoka is gone. Obi-Wan has lied to him. And, in his dreams, Padme is dying.

When Palpatine reveals that he is a Sith, Anakin feels his entire world tilting on his axis.

There are a few certainties that he once knew. The suns will rise. The suns will set. There is suffering, and he can help.

But there is so little he is certain about now. He cannot see the sun rise from hyperspace. He does not see the sun set from Coruscant. 

But he is a Jedi, he is on the Council. He is not a Master, but that does not matter.

There is one certainty that he still holds on to.

Padme is suffering, and Anakin will relieve it.

**Author's Note:**

> some background: as somebody with prospagnosia, i don't visualize scenes in my head while i write. as a result, i often see visualize the shape of stories as the message that they should convey. as i was thinking about anakin skywalker and his fall to the dark, one thing that i focused on was this narrowing of his focus--that he goes from a child who wants to help everybody, to somebody who only cares about padme. i wanted to articulate this narrowing world-view visually; that as anakin grows in power and strength, his focus narrows and narrows. it's this attachment, this selfishness, that leads to his fall into the dark. i structured the story with narrowing widths to show that he's steadily seeing less and less of the galaxy around him, until finally his focus is only on padme.
> 
> if you want to see more of my structural fic, you can read [this is not a love story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15245484) (bbc!sherlock) and [diffusion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15284676) (hannibal (tv)), which are my other two stories that utilize structure. or, as i like to call them, the other two stories where i spent too much time coding a custom css page. please learn from me and avoid writing custom css pages for your fanfics.
> 
> thanks for reading, leave a kudo or comment. or come yell at me on twitter, where i run polls and post snippets.
> 
>   * Follow me on twitter [@virdant](http://virdant.twitter.com)
>   * [Like & retweet on twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/1293730420287184897)
>   * Comment and kudo below
> 



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